Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to Tell Pepper
by L A Adolf
Summary: Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying. A series of missing scenes/thoughts on a theme from Iron Man 2. Movie Verse. THANK you to everyone who has reviewed, favorited and subscribed to this story! Now complete.
1. Chapter 1 Our Art Collection

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

1/6

L.A. Adolf

1.

"I'll need you to wear a surgical mask until you are feeling better."

"That's rude."

If I told you right now that if you don't—those seemingly innocuous common cold germs of yours could kill me—you'd be **grabbing** a mask right now. _If_ I could make you understand I'm being serious. _If _I could explain why, _show_ you the equations. The blood toxicity reports. The heavy metal rash expanding exponentially across my skin. _If_ I could share with you the constant searing pain that flows down neural pathways and through arteries, into veins and right on down to capillary networks.

That would require more explanation than I have energy for and more patience than you have left—judging from the way you charged in here in full fulminating rage.

About an art collection donated to the BSA.

I thought for sure that would be the one thing that would focus your attention.

Make you see what is in front of you.

That. I. Am _Dying._

Just when I should be learning to live.

And learning to love you. The way you deserve to be loved.

I guess I don't deserve any better. No one has quite figured out that flippant, hedonistic, egocentric, self-absorbed Tony died on an Afghan plain not long ago and that his walk-in is still trying to get his bearings. Evolve and make the second chance Yinsen handed Tony Stark count.

Now, the changeling is dying too. All of Yinsen's working of miracles with magnetic coils and car batteries rendered moot, null and void--its task reduced to cleaning up the mess that Tony-before-the-cave created.

Tony, who's all too human heart was never in building a bigger and better bomb to blow things up and make America—and Dad -- proud.

_That_ was why that old Tony buried himself in booze, dangerous living, and meaningless sex. Until that was _all_ that was left of the wunderkind with the genius I.Q who was gonna do his dad one better and make the world a better place in which to live.

Funny how things worked out.

How you had to pierce a heart to find you had one; how you had to die to want to learn to live.

I really _do_ know what I'm doing. Dying has a wonderful ability to make everything that was muddy and uncertain suddenly crystal clear.

So, we resume our dance around The Important Things, ignore the thousand pound armored suit in the room, and argue when we should be making love.

_**to be continued**_

_Thanks Delorita for the idea, inspiration and encourgement! Hope you like!_


	2. Chapter 2 Monaco Bar Americain

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

L.A. Adolf

2/6

2.

Tony had tried to talk to Pepper several times on the flight to Monaco, but always, it was the same. She was distracted by Stark Industries business, interrupted by in-flight phone calls or emails every time he had tried to start a conversation.

She wore the mantle of CEO well—and he was proud of her. She had a natural affinity for the aspects of running Stark that had bored Tony to tears from the get-go. His joy was being in the lab, his security in the predictability of mathematical equations, his thrill that of discovery and innovation. His satisfaction and fulfillment was in building with his mind and hands. Pepper had always been the born business genius, under-utilized as his executive assistant. She'd have been running Stark years ago, if not for Stane and the still intact glass ceiling that kept highly educated and qualified women second to privileged sons of company founders and invisible to the ken of the ever controlling Board of Directors.

Tony was not—and never had been--either psychologically or emotionally suited to the mendacities of running a corporation. He'd only taken over because Stane was dead, and had wrought so much damage and death; it seemed inconceivable to do anything else. With the company change in direction, he had to be, not only Iron Man, but Tony Stark, Chief Executive, Operating and Financial Officer all rolled into one. That the company had-- from a managerial standpoint as Pepper had so acerbically pointed out a couple of days ago – recovered its stock losses and was positioned to become a leader in green technology, was as much a credit to Pepper as it had been to Tony's reimagining of the company mission.

Tony placed his arm around Pepper, guiding her through the paparazzi swarm as they entered the Hotel De Paris. She was nervous, but poised, and in that moment, Tony mused that he had probably never loved her more. He should tell her that.

"Smile…" he said aloud instead, pasting on his own rakish grin as they stepped into the Bar Americain, his arm tightening around her in response to the uptick in her own tension, the muscles of her lean form taut under his touch---she'd shatter if she wasn't careful, and over something this minor, it wasn't worth it. So he joked.

"Now you look constipated. Try not to flare your nostrils." Tony advised, receiving a well placed jab to the ribs that told him she'd heard.

Natalie Rushman, all beauty and business, approached them, waving to their designated table in a skin tight salmon-colored dress that hugged her curves. Tony felt Pepper tense up again. It wasn't nerves this time, but something more primal, and one of the reasons he'd wanted Ms Rushman from Legal as his new executive assistant. Pepper Potts was positively glowing green.

With jealousy.

He'd let Pepper think he'd heeded her "No." to his "I want one." Instead he'd privately called personnel to confirm the Rushman hiring, then bundled her immediately off to Monaco to arrange what was billed as being Tony Stark's—and by extension Ms Potts' -- first real vacation in ten years.

Something very primal in Tony responded favorably to Pepper's burst of non verbal possessiveness. He was usually the one pursuing the prize, rather novel and nice to be the focus of the pursuit for a change.

Even if he did have to be dying and not in any shape to take advantage of it all.

He glad handed his way across the room, listened to Natalie's report about dinner at 9:30, responding with a riposted "I'll be there at eleven." Smiled at the idea of an electric jet—its inventor little realizing as Stark promised to work with him on it, he'd initiated full funding for the project before signing off his control of Stark Industries. Did his usual thing of blowing off Justin Hammer from a distance, and imperiously demanded, for no other reason than because he could and it was expected of him, a change in his party's placement from the center of the window tables to the corner.

It was now or never. He herded Pepper to the bar. Ordered drinks. Took a deep breath.

"Whatever happens in the next twenty minutes, I need you to go with it," he began, leaning close to Pepper, his voice low in the perfect shell of her ear.

_I need you to know that I love you, that I always loved you, and that the worst thing about dying right now is that we'll never have what I know we could have had. And that I can't put you through what is going to come. That this way is still going to hurt, but so much less than it would…later._

But those words never had a chance to pass his lips, because Hammer was butting in, with that Vanity Faire "piece" –not one of his finest lays -- Christine in tow.

It took a while to ditch the pair, Pepper stalking off to go wash off and Tony pulled to the Hammer table to trade barbs and insults before peeling off himself.

He was overdue for a blood toxicity reading, Pepper was nowhere in sight, and if he had to spend one more second in Hammer's company, he'd puke up palladium streaked bile all over the pristine white table. And Hammer really did make one want to immediately head for a shower, unctuosity not oozing from the moron's pores but flooding from them.

_Blood toxicity. Fifty four per cent._

Tony opened his shirt, gazing at the network of silver that resembled nothing more than computer circuitry gone mad. His chest and abdomen were covered by the spidery lines. Jarvis was in his ear piece recommending that he immediately check himself into the nearest medical facility.

"Any more bad ideas?" he asked his reflection in the mirror, the haggard face that used to be his own gazing back at him, eyes empty.

Only one.

People only went to car races for one reason. In the hope that someone would crash—spectacularly.

Never let it be said that he didn't give his public what it wanted.

_To be continued_


	3. Chapter 3: 30,000 feet

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

3/6

L.A. Adolf

3.

I am _supposed _to be in the Stark Industries jet's private sleeping cabin, "resting". Ms Potts has noticed finally that I'm not looking my best, but considering the day we've had that is only to be expected.

Pepper made me promise to take it easy on the flight home as a condition of not being taken directly to a hospital after the fiasco of the Monaco Historic Grand Prix. I'd been able to nix the medical attention so I could follow up on the nutcase in possession of proprietary Stark Repulsor Technology, as frustratingly fruitless as that turned out to be.

The trade off had been submitting to a remote scan courtesy of the emergency medical suite built into the Stark Industries Jet. The jet's sleeping cabin could, if circumstances required it, be transformed into full operating theatre inside of ten minutes, so a quick medical scan was a snap with data satellite uplinked to Jarvis. My favorite AI was able to report within minutes that Anthony Edward Stark, Esquire had no broken bones, no concussion, only a few contusions which required no professional medical care.

Of course, Jarvis had been programmed by yours truly not to reveal anything about heavy metal poisoning, so aside from being terminal, I was reported in excellent health. Especially for someone who'd been in a racecar barreling down the race track at sixty miles per hour upended by a plasma whip wielded by a maniac.

A day in the life, really.

The Mark IV "suitcase suit" should have been so lucky, that poor slob is critical. I am able kill a few early hours of the flight home outlining modifications to the "football", which Jarvis can be fabricating even while we're still enroute home.

It isn't long before I'm bored. Bed rest is overrated, especially when you're dying and have too many affairs to settle.

Characteristically ignoring what I've been told to do, I sneak into to the galley.

As a chef, I make a pretty good engineer. But I have to do something to make peace with Pep, and an in-flight meal seems a step in the right direction.

A not very wise man once said that you had to break some eggs to make an omelet, but I don't think he meant over two dozen. Two and a half hours and several ruined efforts later, I emerge into the main cabin with a passable Omelet Florentine a la Stark in hand, to find Pepper gazing disconsolately at the main cabin high definition TV monitor. Our favorite government ass-clown is decrying Iron Man's Big Adventure on CNN, demanding the usual.

It's just Pepper and I in the main cabin. Happy is keeping the pilot company and Ms. Rushman is still on the ground, tidying up a few details. She'll be flying back to Los Angeles on another Stark Industries jet a few hours behind us. I believe I sense Ms. Potts' hand in that circumstance. But I flatter myself too much believe it is because she wants to be alone with me on the flight back to California.

Pepper, after a few minutes of perfectly justified hysterics after I pulled the plug on the berserker and went to be sure that she and Happy were really in one piece, had shoved me violently away from her, refusing to so much as look in my direction for the remainder of our stay in the principality. The conversation we have now, over my rapidly cooling peace offering, is just as strained and tense as our relationship—insofar as we have ever **really** had one -- has become.

Pepper is looking at me, her beautiful face a mask of confusion and hurt.

"What aren't you telling me?" she asks, her tone almost rhetorical, her eyes the saddest I've ever seen them. The look in those blue depths paralyzes me, and I do not—_**cannot**_—respond. Even though that had been my intention when I walked back into the main cabin. Tony Stark has never been reckoned as **ever** being at a loss for words. But I am.

Why? I owe her so damn much, especially the truth.

There had been a time she could read my mind—why not now, when it was so much more important?

I'm not ready to say goodbye. Not here, 30,000 feet. Not after the hell I've put her through in the past few weeks, months, today. Not now. I'm overcome with the desire---no, the absolute rock bottom complusion –to be honest in a time and place of my own choosing. It's how I roll and here, at the end of my life, I can't change that.

"I don't want to go home. Let's cancel the birthday party. Go to Venice, you remember…" the words come pouring out of my mouth as the plan formulates in my head. In Venice, surrounded by memories of happier times; in ageless, romantic surroundings; in a city drowning in its own fluids as surely as I am in my own, I could tell her the truth. I could.

I know my Pepper though. And I know what she's going to say before she says it.

She'll do the responsible thing, be where she's supposed to be, not off in Venice with me. She has my mess to clean up once again, damage control to implement. She has to run the company, thousands of workers and stockholders are depending on her.

She rejects my suggestion that now might be the best time, a chance to recharge batteries and be healthy. The discussion is over, the subject closed. I can see it in her eyes and hear it in her voice as she speaks.

"Not everyone runs on batteries Tony…" she says sadly.

Damn Vanko. If the dumb ass had waited another fifteen minutes, he'd have had his wish, Tony Stark dead, smeared all over the side of the racetrack.

I'm schmuck enough to admit it; he'd fucked up my grand exit strategy. It would have been quick and relatively painless compared to palladium poisoning and the searing agony in my soul that I'm feeling right now.

Dying had to be easier than living like this, seeing disappointment Pepper's eyes as well as resignation at the knowledge that she's never been able to hope for any better from me.

My eyes are burning, I like to think it's from the glint of the sun coming in the cabin windows but it's too late in the game for that kind of self delusion. I swallow down the words I should be saying, silently choking on them.

I feel my lips twist into a rueful smile and watch as Pepper moves her gaze to the cabin window beside her, effectively shutting me out again.

No less than I deserve.


	4. Chapter 4 I am Become Death

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

L.A. Adolf

4/6

4.

The Iron Man suit did not lend itself to plucking liquor bottles out of climate controlled cabinets or ascending a narrow flight of stairs leading from the garage to the living levels of Tony Stark's Malibu mansion.

Palladium poisoning at 89% blood toxicity did nothing to ameliorate the awkwardness of either action—quite the opposite. With eyes that could barely focus; compromised muscle function and coordination; a brain that felt like it was turning to jello and oozing out his ears; a rising tide of nausea and a nervous system literally on fire, he really should be letting Jarvis call an ambulance – if not a Flight for Life helicopter--for him.

Tony was halfway to the spacious living area where the birthday party guests were gathering when a juddering, jagged lightning bolt of pain shot out from the RT unit in his chest to every nerve ending in his beleaguered body. He fell heavily against the wall of the stairwell, prevented from curling into a fetal ball as he slid down the wall to sprawl heavily on the stairs only by the constraints of the suit.

_Just my luck to buy it before I open the presents and cut the cake… _the thought would have made him laugh aloud at the irony of it, if he hadn't already been gritting back an anguished groan.

"Sir," Jarvis's cultured British accent filled the Iron Man suit helmet, the normally soothing voice the sudden equivalent of dozens of fingernails scraping an equal number of blackboards. "Your vital signs are alarmingly erratic. I am alerting Mr. Hogan to your situation. He will assist you to your bedroom while medical assistance and an ambulance are summoned."

It took a moment for the meaning of what Jarvis had just said to sink into brain cells overwhelmed by incoming pain messages from a million nerve endings, and a few seconds more for Tony to find his voice.

"NO!" Tony responded with his best imitation of a roar--never mind that it could only have come from a geriatric lion and sounded more like a feline death rattle. He could already hear Happy starting down the staircase, and the truth of it was--embarrassingly enough he** needed **someone to set him back on his feet, he was that weak -- but goddamn it if he was going to allow his destiny to be ripped out of his own hands. Not now.

Not this close to the end of it. Not when he had too much left to do and the time he had left was being counted down in minutes. He had a plan, it was vital he perform his part in it. It would be hurtful, and messy, but if it played out as it was supposed to, Rhodey and the good ole US of A would have their much coveted suit, Pepper would truly hate him, an adoring public would be completely disenchanted and he could go out of his cursed existence in a manner more fitting his temperament.

Not laid out in some hospital bed, from doctors who wouldn't even be able to offer him surcease from his physical pain while he died in agony a millimeter at a time.

"**No** doctor and **no** ambulance, Jarvis. Override sequence one!" His voice subsided into an agonized whisper.

There was a pregnant instant of silence.

"Very well, sir. Lie still. Mr. Hogan will be with you in a moment."

Tony closed his eyes both against the torment of his body, and in relief that Jarvis wasn't attempting to countermand his override. Jarvis had such capabilities in certain rare circumstances, but his creator lying prone in a stairwell really wasn't a matter of national security or public safety and didn't fit the criteria.

"Boss?" Happy's voice made Tony exert the effort to open his eyes again. Hogan was looking down at him, the normally affable expression that gave him his nickname replaced by panic tinged worry.

"Help me up, Happy. Please?" Tony rasped, and Hogan complied readily. The suit servos normally carried the bulk of the brute strength needed to rise up but they had been calibrated to his normal strength levels, not the total enervation he was experiencing now. "Thanks," he breathed, readjusting to the change in body orientation, waiting for his vision to sort itself out and catch up.

"You drop something, Mr. Stark?"

It took Tony a moment to realize that Happy's gaze was fixed on the bottle of expensive liquor that he'd started up the stairs with, and that Hogan couldn't know that it was largely window dressing for the little drama the erstwhile CEO of Stark Industries was preparing to implement.

Happy bent down, retrieved the bottle and placed it into Tony's gauntlet-encased hand. Hogan's expression had changed from one of worried concern to disapproval and ill disguised disgust. Of course he would see that and assume that his employer was too inebriated to stand, Happy had poured Tony into bed enough times in the not so distant past to expect any better of him.

It was amazing in a distracted sort of way, that with every neural pathway he possessed already spasming in pain, that a soul deep agony still tore across his chest and into his heart at that expression on his more-than-chauffeur-and-body guard---his **friend's**-- face.

But Tony had known the admission price when he'd planned this little circus. He waved Happy off and with renewed purpose, if no less physical pain, and trudged up the stairs, leaving Hogan in his wake.

He hadn't imbibed more than a few mouthfuls, but the symptoms of the rise in blood toxicity did lend itself to a good impression of being intoxicated past the legal limit. Waving his bottle of his father's favorite scotch, Tony was staggeringly successful—literally-- in rivaling any alcohol fueled exhibition from his pre-Iron Man, sybaritic playboy days.

The expression he'd seen on Happy's face not that many minutes ago was reflected in the pale and strained countenance of Pepper, who was staring at him with the intensity of a laser beam from across the living room. He watched as her expression changed into something heartbreaking and wounded beyond repair, turning on her heel and almost disappearing into the crowd.

Fuck the RT that kept his heart from being pierced by the shrapnel it carried within its orbit. That ultimate result could surely not be as agonizing as the piercing of his heart now, as he watched her turn away.

But it was necessary. God help him. It was. He took a fortifying swig from his bottle and continued the masquerade with a vengeance.

"The question I get asked most often," he announced, not at all surprised that his words were somewhat slurred and unsteady, "is how the hell do you go to the bathroom in that suit? The answer is," He paused for dramatic effect, closed his eyes and schooled his features into an expression of beatific relief he was as far as he could be from feeling, "just like that."

Truth of the matter was, he wished he **could **take a piss about now, but as Jarvis had warned, kidney function was one of the first organ systems to be compromised by the palladium, and he wasn't functionally capable at the moment of producing more than a thimbleful—hardly enough for the suit to bother recycling.

Tony reopened his eyes to see Rhodey, looking at him across the room with the expression of disapproval that had become a permanent fixture on his features. Tony suddenly missed the friend into whose arms he'd collapsed in an Afghan desert; who'd sat at his bedside in the military hospital in Germany for the full two days he'd been there getting checked out and recovering a bit more of this strength; who had stayed by his side all the way home. Whom he more recently shared the near orgasmic joy of flying without a plane as he'd familiarized James Rhodes with the operation of the Iron Man Mark II suit. The man he'd appointed to be his judge, jury and executioner.

He saw Pepper making her way towards him, her face stony and stormy. There was something magnificent about her in full-on rage mode, the mask of consummate, unflappable professional slipped revealing a luminous being capable of earth shattering fire and passion. He'd never admit it to her, but he often went out of his way to piss her off, just to see that side of her emerge, however briefly and minutely.

Right now, he wondered if it was an effect of his level of blood toxicity that he was melting into a puddle of hormonal goo, going weak at the knees and even lighter in the head than he had already been. He doubted he could blame it all on the palladium, it had been happening for a while now. Ever since the return from Afghanistan he'd been experiencing emotional reactions on the level of either rampaging PMS or a schizophrenic break whenever he was within five feet of her…

"I love you!" he blurted as she came to stand in front of him, having to look up at him for a change, her spike heels no match for the extra height the Iron Man suit and its heroic proportions afforded him. He realized he meant those words with all his heart, that he was standing looking at her with a sappy expression on his face that could be blamed on the booze, but really had nothing to do with it… "Love you, love you…I may be dying but …I'll do it happily if you…give me a little smooch, you know you want to." He murmured, leaning in close to those fascinatingly delicate lips.

_Smooth, Stark smooth_. Tony was beyond caring if his technique was seriously lacking. A dying man should be allowed a sappy moment or two.

Pepper wasn't paying him any attention. Instead, she ducked his admittedly clumsy attempt at a kiss. She pried the microphone from his hand assuming an expression so artificial and brittle that it was a wonder her face didn't break into a hundred pieces when she spoke a second later.

"Does this guy know how to throw a party or what?" she asked the crowd of guests without turning to look at them. In an acid undertone she spoke to him sotto voce, away from the mike. "You're done, the party's over."

Pepper Potts knew how to break a mood. "We didn't open presents or have cake!" Tony responded with unfeigned disappointment and hurt. He'd just told her he loved her and tried to kiss her, and told her the truth about him dying and she hadn't so much as batted an eyelash!

"You just peed in your Iron Man suit. It's not sexy," she countered angrily.

"You could drink that water, it's recirculated!" He protested, a flat statement of truth. The suit recycled sweat to prevent heat exhaustion and urine was recirculated back into his body to keep him hydrated, there being no room in the suit for bottled water or cans of soda.

"You want to say goodbye to your guests or should I do it?" she hissed in response, offering him the microphone with one hand, and snatching his liquor bottle with the other.

It was a mark of his and Pepper's relationship, that even at the end of everything, they could speak at each other but could not make each other listen. It was their tragic flaw, the one thing that had always and forever doomed any real relationship between them.

Though he had nothing near the energy to support it, something very like rage flooded into his body, and it was strong enough to counteract the pain and weakness he'd been fighting all evening long.

"Pepper Potts, everybody," Tony used his best announcer's voice, trying to keep it even and affable. "The party is over. Hell, the party has been over for me for the last hour and a half. However…the _after party_ starts in fifteen minutes," Tony paused, "and if anyone doesn't like it ---Pepper!—" he tossed the aside in her direction with vehemence, "there's the door!"

Tony swung his arm over Pepper's head and towards the Giacometti "Walking Man" sculpture, taking aim at the tempered glass wall behind the $100 million dollar sculpture and fired. There was something very satisfying in seeing the glass shatter, and with it, the impassive mask of Pepper's expression. She was gaping at him, eyes wide in horror and profoundly disappointed, reeling away in retreat.

The time had more than come to get the show and his funeral, on the road.

And just as he intended, though it took the announced fifteen minutes highlighted by some repulsor tech skeet shooting of bottles and arc reactor chest bursts to Gallagher a watermelon, all hell broke loose right on schedule.

"I'm only going to say this once. GET OUT!"

Tony's crowd of guests parted, and there stood James Rhodes in the Mark II Iron Man suit. Deliverance in shiny titanium, grace to be granted by the man he'd once called his best and only friend.

_I am become death, destroyer of worlds…_


	5. Chapter 5 Strawberries

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

L.A. Adolf

5.

Lithium dioxide injections and pep-talks from beyond the grave notwithstanding, I was no closer to finding the answer to what Fury had referred to as "the riddle of my heart" than I was before lockdown.

I'd read Dad's notebook twice over again after watching his 16mm letter to the future, the cockles of my heart considerably warmer than they had been towards my father at any time in the last twenty years. Maybe it wasn't his fault that he couldn't relate to kids as well as his intellectual equals.

That he was dead almost hurt more now than when it had happened. Hell, it did hurt more now. At least at the time I'd been able to hide behind a false stoicism that we'd never really **known** let alone **loved** each other. When all along, we both had.

_Love. _

A father's love was holding out hope for his son's life, twenty years after his own had ended.

_Love._

My best friend had managed not to kill me, in spite of all my careful planning. I'm glad I hadn't done that to Rhodey, after all. Or that Rhodey had seen my bluff and called me on it. Whatever had happened.

_Love. _

I still have unfinished business.

Telling Pepper that I love her once again, in terms she'll believe this time—maybe.

I'd gotten a reprieve, but I still hadn't managed to tell Pepper the truth. About a lot of things.

If Howard's solution would save me—provided I could follow the bread crumb trail he'd left me, I needed to start rebuilding trust with her now. And if not, if I couldn't find the answer that Fury seemed convinced was out there to save my sorry ass, I still owed her the truth.

Time to check out Agent Coulson's perimeter.

%%%

I knew she'd be angry. Hell, I welcomed a chance to be yelled at and called ten kinds of bastard.

What I couldn't deal with was the silence.

It had been worse than pulling alligator teeth to get her attention off the phone and Stark business and on to me.

It was tough seeing not hurt or hatred in her eyes, I expected those, but instead, distance and a kind of resignation. She was done with me—she didn't care anymore.

I still had a trump card or two to play. This wasn't just Tony "Dickhead" Stark asking forgiveness for his latest bout of spoiled brat bad behavior, this was Tony "Dying" Stark who'd gotten a second chance to made amends and had to give it his best shot.

"…I was just driving over…to apologize to you. I haven't been entirely upfront with you and I want to be…"

Her withering glare or that stupid ass perpetual motion sculpture waving around in front of my face, I don't know which was the more disheartening and annoying. Losing the battle to move that bloody desk adornment, I tried again.

"Do you know how short life is? I do and if I never got to express…this has all been pretty revelatory for me…"

The cold tone that broke into my warm-up routine—I should have expected it, but somehow I didn't.

"If you say 'I' one more time, I'm going to hurl something at your head." Pepper had never spoken to me in quite that way before, and I was pretty sure I didn't like it. Some gewgaw I'd snatched off her desk to fiddle with flew in her direction, and I was horrified, but she caught it low and stopped it neatly. "I'm trying to do a job here, a job you were meant to do. I'm putting out **your** fires and taking **your** heat…"

God, how was it that this woman could take me, at the lowest ebb in my ill-spent life and make me feel even worse? She was right, I couldn't argue with any of that. But damn it, I was trying make amends here, to express my gratitude for all the shit she had and was taking on my behalf and she was not letting me do it.

A word in edgewise now and again would be nice…

She was moving that hurtful look from me to the basket of strawberries I'd brought as a peace offering. Maybe there was a chance yet…

"Did you bring me strawberries?"

Okay, so it wasn't the tone of voice I would have liked to have heard say those words, but it was a start, maybe everything wasn't lost yet…

"You do realize that there is only one thing on earth that I'm deathly allergic to?" The air in the office had dipped just about down to absolute zero. Kelvin.

"Strawberries?" Shit. I couldn't get a break here, could I? But I wasn't known as fast talking Tony for nothing, "Don't you see, this is progress, I knew there was a connection…"

For a moment, Pepper's expression changed, seeming almost to soften, "I need you…" she began, almost sweetly—at least compared to the dripping sarcasm of a few seconds before.

My moment had arrived and I leapt at it, "I need you too! I think I'm in…"

"…to _**leave!" **_

Someone had snuck in when I wasn't looking and replaced my Virginia "Pepper" Potts with a doppelganger fresh from being a drill sergeant at some boot camp or other. My forward momentum sputtered to a halt.

There I was, my heart hanging out of my chest—just about literally at this point in my week—and she'd shut me out. Totally and completely. Utterly and absolutely.

Any other time I'd have forged forward and just shouted it out---never content to let someone else have the last word. I'd have jumped to my feet and just yelled. _**"I think I'm in love with you. And I'm dying dammit, and I want you to know that! LISTEN. To. Me!**_

Instead all I could do was sit there, mouth agape, tongue and vocal chords paralyzed, every last bit of wind knocked out of my sails. My one totally selfless moment—the pivot on which our entire relationship and future revolved, vanished, gone.

And lost irrevocably, because in that moment, Fury's little black widow and my now ex-assistant, sailed into the room in the guise of her new position as executive assistant to Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries.

"Wheels up in twenty five minutes, Ms Potts." All business and little black dress. Followed by Happy who looked –for the first time in all the years we'd known each other, ill at ease in my presence.

"Need anything, boss?" he asked, and I was grateful for one person to be addressing me in this room of all too efficient estrogen and cold shoulders.

"I'm good…" I responded, unthinking, so used to that voice aimed in my direction and mine alone.

"I'll be right down," Pepper replied to the question that had been hers to answer all along.

Happy flinched a bit, and shrugged. Well, an ex-CEO and dying man didn't really have need of a chauffeur did he? Especially not one he'd sold on being so drunk on his ass the night before last, he hadn't been able to negotiate his own back stairs.

"Guess I lost both kids in the divorce." I commented ruefully, trying to keep my tone light and ironic. I flashed one of my patented brilliant smiles.

Yeah, ironic, that is me.

I traded barbs with Natalie/Natasha-whoever-the-hell while Pepper rose from behind the desk and walked regally towards the door. Happy shot me a final half apologetic glance and they were gone. I don't really remember what all I said, just needed to vent at someone in that moment and my favorite black widow was handy.

"Go home, or I'll have you collected." She spat and disappeared out the door.

Altogether it had been a shitty week. I'd been trying for days to be the man that everyone wanted me to be, own up to my mistakes and do my best to correct them. I was getting nowhere so bloody fast that I had road rash in places even I didn't know about.

And I was no closer to figuring out what the hell Howard Stark was talking about when he'd told me I was his greatest creation and gesturing vaguely across the decades, at the "key to the future."

I stood, grabbed the strawberries and stalked across the room, popping one in my mouth before dumping the rest in Pepper's garbage can where they'd probably rot. Not my office anymore. I didn't care.

My eyes were drawn to the dusty Stark Expo 74 model I'd had in this—what used to be my—office for the five months during which the 2010 Stark Expo was being constructed. It had served as inspiration and blueprint for what was, even now a reality on the other side of the country. A reality towards which Pepper, Happy and Nat-whoever were even now making their way.

_This is the key to the future…_

I'd seen that plaque a million times since the model had been retrieved from the Stark Industries archives.

But suddenly I was seeing it for the first time.

_The key to the future is here._

Howard Stark had just delivered a pointy-toed kick to my ass.

And if I'd been having a week full of frustration, failure and frailty…at least one good thing had come of my latest catastrophe—emerging now, right before my eyes. Shiny and bright.

"Bambi!" I yelled at the top of my lungs to the secretary on the other side of the office doors, "I need a dolly!"

Turning away from death, I had just found life.


	6. Chapter 6 Save It For The Honeymoon

**Five Times That Tony Stark Tried to tell Pepper Potts He was Dying**  
( and the one time she heard him say it)

L.A. Adolf

"You've got your best friend back…" Natasha Romanoff was saying in Tony's ear.

Tony closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. _Thank God for large favors, Rhodey was kicking my ass. _

No, not Rhodey, War Machine. All the more reason to keep the Iron Man technology privatized. Especially now that he was probably going to live past the weekend. Well, if things went well in the battle he knew was coming. Any time now.

"Well done on the chest piece! Your vitals look promising," Natasha continued. Tony could hear the smile in her voice and whatever residual anger he'd held towards her melted away in the reality of the moment. He knew he felt better, Jarvis had been cautiously optimistic, but the sheer pleasure in the Black Widow's voice was a ringing endorsement of his success.

"Yes, for the moment, I'm not dying," Tony responded his tone a cross between dry and sincere. That kind of vocal contradiction could short circuit a guy's speech centers, he thought distractedly. The thought skittered away quick enough, it did feel good to have confirmation that he'd given the grim reaper the boot.

"WHAT do you mean, you're 'not _dying'_?" The sound that emitted through the remote communication link could only be described as a horrified shriek.

_Oh shit. Pepper_. What the hell was she doing on this comm channel?

"You were _dying_? Wh—"

"**Not** anymore, Pepper" Tony interjected, damning the fact that he couldn't SEE her. The heads up display in the Iron Man helmet tracked her as still being in the Stark Pavilion building, she must have found Hammer's control console. Which meant that she'd been monitoring that lovely cat and mouse chase between himself, Rhodey and the drones?

Great.

"—hy didn't you tell me that?" Pepper continued on as though she hadn't heard and with that as a warm up act, he wasn't surprised. "You were _**dying**_…When were you going to tell me that?"

"I was _going_ to make an omelet and tell you!" Tony snapped back, voice as loud and authoritative as he could make it, given their tenuous connection—hell; it had always been that hadn't it? Tentative and tenuous, always teetering on the edge of disaster. "I'm okay now!"

That declaration had rendered his CEO at least temporarily silent. "Look, I'll apologize formally, when I'm not fighting off a 'Hammeroid attack' okay?

Pepper was revving up again, muttering something vaguely threatening and every last fiber of Tony's soul wanted to power up the suit, find her and make her understand, but he had much bigger fish to fry at the moment. There was only one way to handle this.

"We could have been in Venice! " Tony accused, taunted, seeing in his mind's eye the eruption of Pepper's temper.

"Oh please!" came the rejoinder. At least the tinge of hysteria seemed to be gone from her voice.

But whatever else might have been said was lost in Ms Romanoff's announcement that something new was coming, something outside the control of the Hammer mainframe.

That couldn't be good.

Time to wake up Rhodey and get to work.

One part of Virginia Potts wanted to run screaming from the Stark Pavilion. Instead, she walked, at a measured pace, along with the policemen who were escorting her, reporting to her as head of Stark Industries, on the state of the Expo evacuation.

_Dying. Tony. Said. He. Had. Been. Dying._

Her heart clenched painfully in her chest and did an acrobatic freefall onto the top of her diaphragm. She struggled to breathe.

It was everything she'd ever feared, every nightmare she'd ever had.

Way before Tony Stark had been kidnapped in Afghanistan she'd had the dread.

That he'd drive one of his many sports cars too fast.

That he'd drink so much and so often that his liver would fail.

That he'd tumble into bed with some HIV infected slut and she'd have to watch him die by degrees from his own excesses.

Then he'd been kidnapped. Gone for three months, given up for dead. The nightmare a reality for every single day and every hour, minute and second of every single day for those three months. The only thing that had kept her going was the fact that nobody had been found, and where there was no corpse, there was at least a feeble hope of life.

God, how she'd clung to that slender thread.

She thought the worst had been over when Rhodey had brought him back from Afghanistan, not quite in one piece, but alive. Miraculously walking off the air transport under his own power, imperiously overriding her order to Happy to take him to the hospital, and demanding American cheeseburgers. Holding a press conference that had blown Stark stock into a nosedive.

Same old Tony, back in charge.

She tried not to think too much about that apparatus in his chest, the one that now _kept_ him alive.

Or to recall coming to his workshop one evening and finding Tony in the middle of a swarm of assembly arms, removing bullet riddled armor from his body.

_Bullet riddled._

The horror never went away after that. It clung as close to her as her shadow.

More than once her rational mind had told her to escape. To get away from the source of her terror as fast as she possibly could. But the source of her panic was also the source of her life. She could no more walk away from Anthony Edward Stark than she could stop breathing or will her own heart to cease beating.

Because unbridled, uncontrolled fear was corrosive and exhausting, she'd found a way to insulate herself from it: immerse herself in Stark Industries; pick up the slack that Tony continued to drop like dirty underwear. Hiding behind the ultra capable façade of Virginia "Pepper" Potts, the power behind the Stark throne, she'd been able to function.

But at what cost. Tony had been dying…apparently from what little information Natalie, whoever she really was, had given before logging off the communication link, ever since he'd come back from the near east.

Right before her eyes. Eyes that saw, but didn't want to comprehend.

He hadn't looked right in months. His complexion dusky, eyes sometimes seeming to glisten with fever. While he'd never been exactly forthcoming with his plans, he'd become secretive, reclusive, spending hours not otherwise occupied in putting out militarily untouched fires all over the world as Iron Man in his garage/laboratory.

He often forgot to eat, seemed to be driven by some inner fire that Pepper could sense but not understand. He'd never spoken much about his time in captivity; she'd chalked it up to post traumatic stress disorder and nagged him to talk to a professional.

Until she'd started sounding like a broken record. And he'd taken to looking at her with an expression in his eyes that combined misery with something akin to hunger.

"Are you coming with us?" One of the policemen asked, having just finished acknowledgment of the evacuation suggestions that the automatic Pepper Potts CEO of Stark Industries persona had made while the human, vulnerable Virginia Potts whirled around on the merry-go-round of her own tangled emotions.

"No, I'm going to stay here until the park is cleared." Pepper heard herself say. Efficient, calm, collected. None of the things she felt inside.

_Tony had been __**trying**__ to tell her he was dying._

For weeks, if not months. Not in words, she could see that now. He'd been cagey, moving his chess pieces across the board with patience and deliberation that few who knew the mercurial playboy would have suspected him of being capable of.

Gifting the art to the Boy Scouts and making her CEO hadn't even been the first salvo in his arsenal of withdrawal from life—other actions called out to her now. Some small on the scale of things, assignment of certain personal papers and possessions to the Stark Industries archives; discussions of how Jarvis could be integrated into the Stark mainframe, referring to innovations and creations as his children-the only ones he had, he'd joked once—she'd been deaf to the unspoken "that I'll _ever have"._

His asking her to witness a will-a personal document, not a corporate one-not surprising in a man who had so recently had such a close brush with his own mortality perhaps, but when considered in context….

His emphasis in discussions about the new direction of Stark Industries coming always back to legacy, leaving something positive and beneficial to the future.

There had been subtle signs too. That infamously roving eye still took in eye candy, but never bedded them anymore. The gift to the Boy Scouts of America was just one facet of his attention shifting to the next generation; he went out of his way to acknowledge the young boys and girls who popped up at public appearances, begging for Iron Man autographs. He might be flippant with adults and the paparazzi, but with those children he took his time and turned his full attention to making a connection, however brief, and the kids loved him for it. Tony Stark would be the last man on earth she'd attribute paternal inclinations to—but they were there. Nascent perhaps but tangibly there.

_Oh God. What have I done? How blind could I have possibly been? He tried to tell me he was dying and I didn't want to listen…_

…_when he made me CEO. _

…_in Monaco, before the race._

…_on the flight home, when he brought me the omelet and tried to talk me into taking a leave, a retreat to Venice._

_In my office, just yesterday. When he brought me strawberries. _

Pepper sobbed aloud.

A noise jolted her out of her thoughts, following it to its source; her eyes fell on the chest plate of a fallen Hammer drone. The reactor piece was glowing red.

_Why…-?_

Of all the reactions I would have expected from Pepper, once we landed, stirred **and** shaken, on the roof of the building across the freeway from the Expo, being violently pushed away was about the last one.

I staggered back, the Iron Man helmet short circuiting annoyingly as I did so. I ripped the damn thing off, and stood regarding Pepper with my mouth agape.

I wasn't sure if she was hysterical with fear or with anger, or maybe just completely and totally fed up on general principles. It was hard to tell. She was ranting on about not being able to take the stress, declaring she was quitting her position as CEO of Stark Industries. Then she segued into accusations of leaving messes to clean up and how she'd "never know if you are going to come back alive".

God, she was magnificent in full-on rant mode, going on about weeks with me being like dog years, like presidents. Her eyes were like blue flames, and that red hair…not quite as alluring as her lips but close—I wanted to fist my hands in that fiery mane—but I still had my gauntlets on. She always wore such pale lipstick, I wonder what she'd look like in race car red…and more to the point—what she'd taste like. Right. Now.

"You're right," I said gently, hating to break into the glory that was Pepper Potts pitching a conniption. "You deserve better."

**That** stopped her in her tracks.

Not a bad day's work.

Invented- well, rediscovered—a new element.

Saved the world—well, Flushing New York, at least.

Rendered Pepper Potts speechless.

Fucking amazing…!

I'd better not miss my chance to get a word in edgewise: "You take such good care of me. I've been in a bad spot and you got me through it."

I leaned in for a kiss. The kiss I'd been trying to work up the courage to lay on those lips ever since I blew my way out of a cave in Afghanistan what seemed like years ago.

To myself I thought. "Oh wow."

Out loud I said, "That was weird."

Pepper was breathing heavily in the wake of the lip lock, "It wasn't weird," she asserted passionately.

"No? Run that by me again." I claimed that warm, pliant mouth with mine.

I'd kissed more women in my life than I care to think about, let alone count. But that had just been prologue. This was the kiss I had been searching for all these years and the entire world over. Pepper tasted like home and like love and like forever…

And leave it to Rhodey to take a moment like that and say that we looked like "two seals fighting over a grape".

As partners go, he's aces, but as a romantic? He makes a better pilot. I thought he'd never leave.

Tony and I watched as Rhodey blasted up into the sky, then turned our eyes back to what we really wanted to look at—and into. Each other's eyes.

He was beautiful. Transformed. Lines of pain and illness that had been engraved in that beloved face for months were gone. He looked like he had the first time I'd laid eyes on him, so many years ago. Young and vital, full of the promise of the future, intelligence and a sincere boyish charm shining from big, beautiful brown eyes.

He was saying something about clean up, and I played along. He said he wasn't going to accept my resignation, and I said something imminently forgettable in response. We grinned at each other like lovesick teenagers and fell into each other's arms. Hugging the Iron Man suit wasn't as satisfying as it would have been to feel Tony's unencumbered body beneath my hands, but there would be time and opportunity enough for that later. Hopefully at long and lustful leisure.

We'd rebuild the Expo together, that was a given. We'd work out the details of who would be running Stark Industries going forward, Tony's CEO to my CFO sounded like a workable plan. It would all sort itself out. Up to and including under what agreement the US Government would be allowed to utilize the Mark II weaponized suit. After what had almost happened tonight both of us knew that Rhodey would be on board with that.

Nothing had ever come easy for us. Forging a relationship out of the mistakes of our past would take time and effort, but anything worth having did. We had a second chance that not too many people get. I for one wasn't about to waste it.

"Hey, I just realized," Tony was saying, nuzzling my ear playfully, "I'm hungry! I'm starving! Now that we've gotten our first kiss out of the way, what do you say? Dinner and a movie?"

"In that suit?" I responded doubtfully.

"You just want to get me out of it, don't you?" Tony teased, his voice deep and sensual. There were certain parts of my anatomy that were responding to that particular vocal intonation.

_Oh my!_

Who knew that the new element powering the arc reactor imparted the ability to read minds?

Fin.


End file.
